The 19th CPC National Congress has called ecological civilization a “millennium strategy for the sustainable development of Chinese nations”. Since then, the party calls for toughest measures to protect environment. In recent years, Taihu Lake area has fully taken the measures of the provincial and central government. The water quality has been improved for consecutive 10 years by 2017.
The Mashan Street of Binhu district in Wuxi city has 41 river channels, which are all connected to Taihu Lake. Fengying River is one of them. But the water quality of Fengying River has been rated grade V or worse for a long time because of the pollution by residential wastes. In order to change the situation, local authorities have cleaned silt and blocked the drain outlets. Now the water quality has been improved to grade III.
Taihu Lake Area also adopts the river chief system. The system makes the local governor, usually the head of the government fully responsible for the waters under his or her jurisdiction.
The river chief system will be implemented at 4 levels: province, city, county, and township. Rivers chiefs at all levels have been appointed for Rivers in Taihu Lake Area, which means a maintenance and protection scheme is completed.
Jiangsu now has over 20,000 river courses, and 727 of them are major river courses of the province. The regulation gives the river chief system a legal status to tackle water pollution.
Jiangsu Province is upgrading the management system, coverage, tasks, and mechanism of the river chief system under the guidance of the central and provincial government. The work has been basically done so far. 13 cities, 119 counties and 1,334 townships have all set forth their plans on implementing the river chief system. Over 60,000 river chiefs have been appointed, covering 158,600 rivers, lakes and reservoirs.
In the past decade, Jiangsu has spent over 100 billion RMB, which is over 15 billion US Dollars on water protection. The average water quality of Taihu Lake has been rated grade IV for the first 10 months of 2017. And 3 more rivers that flow into Taihu Lake has been rated grade III. No rivers are rated grade V or worse for consecutive 5 years.
